Halloween Countdown - Oct 5 catch up
Oct. 6th, 2013 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienOne of my favorite ghost stories was the Gray Man of Hatteras, another coastal North Carolina legend.
The Gray Man of Hatteras is an indistinct, shadowy figure who walks the beaches of Cape Hatteras as a hurricane is approaching. He appears as the first winds of the storm touch the island whenever a hurricane is a real threat to the island and it's inhabitants.
He never speaks, or at least no one has ever heard him speak. No one has ever gotten close enough. If anyone approaches the Gray Man, his form slowly fades into the salty air until he's completely gone by the time the curious onlooker reaches where he was standing.
But his presence alone is enough to warn the islanders. If he's seen on a beach, it's a sure way to know that the oncoming storm will be a bad one. He's a warning that nature is still something to be taken seriously.
Who is the gray man? Some people say that he's the ghost of a sailor from the island who died at sea in a hurricane. They say that he comes back to warn his fellow islanders of the danger, because his soul was so terrorized by his windy, watery end that he can't bear to go on from this world while he can still prevent others from sharing his fate.
Some others will tell you that he never was a man, that he's just a force of nature. That he's not so much a ghost as a spirit, an expression of the force behind the moving wind and waves pushing the entire sea in front itself as it moves towards the vulnerable island. Even in today's world, where we can watch the storms form from space and fly airplanes into the storm to measure the winds, we still give each hurricane a name when it's born, because we still think that anything so powerful and so willful must be alive. Maybe the Gray Man is just the hurricane itself talking to us, all that power and force born out of the deep ocean reaching out to the land. Maybe the Gray Man is just the only way we have to see that expression of force, when our tiny little human minds encounter something much more powerful that we can ever fully understand.
Whoever he was, whatever he is, the Gray Man of Hatteras still walks the beaches under the shadow of the tallest lighthouse whenever a hurricane is heading towards the island. Even as Cape Hatteras has gone from being a lonely little island to a crowded tourist beach, the Gray Man still warns us of the coming storm.
The Gray Man of Hatteras is an indistinct, shadowy figure who walks the beaches of Cape Hatteras as a hurricane is approaching. He appears as the first winds of the storm touch the island whenever a hurricane is a real threat to the island and it's inhabitants.
He never speaks, or at least no one has ever heard him speak. No one has ever gotten close enough. If anyone approaches the Gray Man, his form slowly fades into the salty air until he's completely gone by the time the curious onlooker reaches where he was standing.
But his presence alone is enough to warn the islanders. If he's seen on a beach, it's a sure way to know that the oncoming storm will be a bad one. He's a warning that nature is still something to be taken seriously.
Who is the gray man? Some people say that he's the ghost of a sailor from the island who died at sea in a hurricane. They say that he comes back to warn his fellow islanders of the danger, because his soul was so terrorized by his windy, watery end that he can't bear to go on from this world while he can still prevent others from sharing his fate.
Some others will tell you that he never was a man, that he's just a force of nature. That he's not so much a ghost as a spirit, an expression of the force behind the moving wind and waves pushing the entire sea in front itself as it moves towards the vulnerable island. Even in today's world, where we can watch the storms form from space and fly airplanes into the storm to measure the winds, we still give each hurricane a name when it's born, because we still think that anything so powerful and so willful must be alive. Maybe the Gray Man is just the hurricane itself talking to us, all that power and force born out of the deep ocean reaching out to the land. Maybe the Gray Man is just the only way we have to see that expression of force, when our tiny little human minds encounter something much more powerful that we can ever fully understand.
Whoever he was, whatever he is, the Gray Man of Hatteras still walks the beaches under the shadow of the tallest lighthouse whenever a hurricane is heading towards the island. Even as Cape Hatteras has gone from being a lonely little island to a crowded tourist beach, the Gray Man still warns us of the coming storm.
sorry about this
Date: 2013-10-07 02:36 am (UTC)Who'd not tell a soul what the matter was;
He walked the salt strand
'Twixt the sea and the land,
As a herald of winds that could shatter us.
Re: sorry about this
Date: 2013-10-07 03:05 am (UTC)